Reliability Management and Program Planning
Reliability Management and Program Planning
This domain tests how reliability work is planned, allocated, reviewed, and closed out across a program, including supplier control and FRACAS.
Core rules
- A reliability program plan defines goals, tasks, deliverables, schedule, and responsibilities; it must match product criticality and contract requirements.
- Allocation converts system goals into subsystem budgets; prediction estimates whether designs can meet them.
- Design reviews, failure review boards, and FRACAS provide closed-loop failure reporting, analysis, and corrective action.
- Supplier reliability is controlled through specifications, qualification, incoming test, and data requirements.
- Metrics should drive decisions: failure escapes, corrective-action closure time, and demonstrated versus predicted reliability.
Worked example
A system reliability goal is 0.95 for a 1,000 h mission with two identical series subsystems. Equal allocation gives each R=√0.95=0.9747. If subsystem A can achieve only 0.97, subsystem B must reach 0.95/0.97=0.9794. That is a concrete budget, not a slogan, and it can be traded against cost, weight, and test time.
Traps
- Setting a goal without an allocation or verification method.
- Running FRACAS as a database rather than a corrective-action loop.
- Accepting supplier MTBF data without defined conditions and confidence.
- Letting reliability tasks start after design freeze.